Column: Who Is a Chicano? And What Is It the Chicanos Want?
By RUBEN SALAZAR, FEB. 6, 1970
A Chicano is a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself.
He resents being told Columbus “discovered” America when the Chicano’s ancestors, the Mayans and the Aztecs, founded highly sophisticated civilizations centuries before Spain financed the Italian explorer’s trip to the “New World.”
Chicanos resent also Anglo pronouncements that Chicanos are “culturally deprived” or the fact that they speak Spanish is a “problem.”
Chicanos will tell you that their culture predates that of the Pilgrims and that Spanish was spoken in America before English and so the “problem” is not theirs but the Anglos who don’t speak Spanish.
Having told you that, the Chicano will then contend that Anglos are Spanish-oriented at the expense of Mexicans.
They will complain that when the governor dresses up as a Spanish nobleman for the Santa Barbara Fiesta, he’s insulting Mexicans because the Spanish conquered and exploited the Mexicans.
It’s as if the governor dressed like an English Redcoat for a Fourth of July parade, Chicanos say.
When you think you know what Chicanos are getting at, a Mexican-American will tell you that Chicano is an insulting term and may even quote the Spanish Academy to prove that Chicano derives from chicanery.
A Chicano will scoff at this and say that such Mexican-Americans have been brainwashed by Anglos and that they’re Tio Tacos (Uncle Toms). This type of Mexican-Americans, Chicanos will argue, don’t like the word Chicano because it’s abrasive to their Anglo-oriented minds.
These poor people are brown Anglos, Chicanos will smirk.
What, then, is a Chicano? Chicanos say that if you have to ask you’ll never understand, much less become a Chicano.
Actually, the word Chicano is as difficult to define as “soul.”
For those who like simplistic answers, Chicano can be defined as short for Mexicano. For those who prefer complicated answers, it has been suggested that Chicano may have come from Chihuahua — the name of a Mexican state bordering on the United States. Getting trickier, this version then contends that Mexicans who migrated to Texas call themselves Chicanos because having crossed into the United States from Chihuahua, they adopted the first three letters of that state, Chi, and then added cano, for the latter part of Texano.
Such explanations, however, tend to miss the whole point as to why Mexican-American activists call themselves Chicanos.
Mexican-Americans, the second largest minority in the country and the largest in the Southwestern states (California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado), have always had difficulty making up their minds what to call themselves.
In New Mexico they call themselves Spanish-Americans. In other parts of the Southwest they call themselves Americans of Mexican descent, people with Spanish surnames or Hispanos.
Why, ask some Mexican-Americans, can’t we just call ourselves Americans?
Chicanos are trying to explain why not. Mexican-Americans, though indigenous to the Southwest, are on the lowest rung scholastically, economically, socially and politically. Chicanos feel cheated. They want to effect change. Now.
Mexican-Americans average eight years of schooling compared to Negros’ 10 years. Farm workers, most of whom are Mexican-American in the Southwest, are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act unlike other workers. Also, Mexican-Americans often have to compete for low-paying jobs with their Mexican brothers from across the border who are willing to work for even less. Mexican-Americans have to live with the stinging fact that the word Mexican is the synonym for inferior in many parts of the Southwest.
That is why Mexican-American activists flaunt the barrio word Chicano — as an act of defiance and a badge of honor. Mexican-Americans, though large in numbers, are so politically impotent that in Los Angeles, where the country’s largest concentration of Spanish-speaking live, they have no one of their own on the City Council. This, in a city politically sophisticated enough to have three Negro councilmen.
Chicanos, then, are merely fighting to become “Americans.” Yes, but with a Chicano outlook.
Column: A Mexican-American Hyphen
By RUBEN SALAZAR, FEB. 13, 1970
The U.S.-Mexican border, or la frontera, is an 1,800-mile-long, virtually imaginary line of barbed wire fencing, an undergrowth of mesquite or chaparral and an easily forded river.
Orators, both American and Mexican, like to describe the border separating their countries as one of the two only such unfortified frontiers in the world, the other being the U.S.-Canadian border.
To many Americans living in the Southwest and to many Mexicans living in Northern Mexico, however, the border is symbolic of the negative differences between the two nations.
Americans who know only the shady aspects of the border towns think of Mexico as a place where they can enjoy doing what is not allowed at home—but would be shocked, the morning after, if such goings on were allowed in “America.”
Mexicans not lucky enough to be among the Latin affluent think of the American border towns as gold mines where nuggets can be picked off the streets. And when they discover this is not true, they blast the Americans as exploiters, unmindful that they had created their own false image of the United States.
These superficial and inaccurate concepts of both countries help only to widen the understanding gap between two peoples who are so close geographically and in many other ways far apart.
That may help explain why Mexican-Americans can feel a deep and agonizing ambivalence about themselves.
They can love the United States for reasons Mexicans can not understand, while loving Mexico for reasons Americans can not understand.
Being a Mexican-American, a wag once said, can leave you with only the hyphen.
On the United States’ other border there are no such esoteric considerations.
Canadians may conceivably feel bitter about the fact that the British Empire lost the 13 colonies but this chauvinism is tempered by knowing that, after all, Canadians and Americans communicate easily and enjoy more or less the same material goods.
Chauvinistic Mexicans, however, are very cognizant of the fact that Mexico lost what is now the American Southwest to the United States in the Mexican-American War which even Gen. Ulysses S. Grant called “unfair.”
Mexicans like to argue that if the United States had not “stolen” half of Mexico’s territory, Mexico would be as rich as the United States is now. This historical controversy, now for the most part taken lightly, might have disappeared altogether by now, it is said, if Mexicans and Americans spoke the same language on both sides of the border and so understood each other better.
Yet, many Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, who speak both languages and admire both countries, feel strangely foreign in their own land.
Members of other minorities—Italians, Irish, Poles, etc.—often wonder why Mexican-Americans have not been able to assimilate as well as they have.
They tend to forget that Italy, Ireland, Poland, etc., are oceans away from the United States while Mexico is very much in evidence to the Southwest’s eight million or so Mexican-Americans.
This makes it difficult for the Mexican-American to think of Mexico in the abstract as, for instance, Irish-Americans might think of Ireland.
The problems of Mexico are and will remain relevant to the Mexican-American. Relations between Mexico and the United States can affect the Mexican-American in the Southwest materially and emotionally.
In the border areas, for instance, the large number of Mexicans crossing the international line every day to work in the United States can directly affect the economic lives of Mexican-Americans, who must compete with this cheap labor.
Projects such as Operation Intercept, a crackdown on dope smuggling across the Mexican border, hurt the pride of the southwest Mexican-Americans who feel the United States is trying to blame Mexicans for a problem which is to a large extent uniquely “Anglo.”
The border may indeed be unfortified, but it separates two peoples who created the Mexican-American—a person many times tormented by the pull of two distinct cultures.
Column: Chicanos Would Find Identity Before Coalition With Blacks
By RUBEN SALAZAR, FEB. 20, 1970
Mexicans and Negroes are learning that they must know each other better if their differences are not to help those who would like to kill the civil rights movement.
This necessary lesson is not easy to come by.
Blacks, scarred by the bitter and sometimes bloody struggle for equality, consider Mexican-Americans or Chicanos as Johnnies-come-lately who should follow black leadership until the Chicanos earn their spurs.
Chicanos, not untouched by bigotry and wary of more sophisticated black leadership, insist on going their own way because, as they put it, “our problems are different from those of the Negroes.”
Despite the loud mouthings of radicals, most blacks and Chicanos want the same thing: a fair chance to enter the mainstream of American society without abandoning their culture and uniqueness.
Much has been made of late of the growing rift between Negroes and Mexican-Americans. Chicanos complain that blacks get most of the government help in the fight against racism, while Negroes scoff that Mexican-Americans have not carried their share of the burden in the civil rights movement.
Leaders of both communities throw up their arms in despair, saying that the blacks and brows are fighting over peanuts and that political coalitions must be formed to make a real impact on the establishment.
Blacks and browns have always been cast together by the forces of history and the needs of these two peoples.
Los Angeles, for instance, was founded not by Spanish caballeros, as romantics would have it, but by blacks and browns.
Historian H.H. Bancroft points out that Los Angeles was founded on Sept. 4, 1781, with 12 settlers and their families, 46 persons in all, “whose blood was a strange mixture of Indian (Mexican) and Negro with here and there a trace of Spanish.”
C.D. Willard, another historian, adds that “cataloguing this extraordinary collection of adults by nationality or color, we have two Spaniards, one mestizo, two Negroes, eight mullatoes and nine (Mexican) Indians.”
The children of the settlers, continues Willard, were even more mixed, as follows: Spanish-Indian, four; Spanish-Negro, five; Negro-Indian, eight; Spanish-Negro-Indian, three; Indian, two.
Since then, Mexicans and Negroes have more or less followed their own separate destinies, due partly to their culture and language differences but also because of the racist strain in American society.
Mexican-Americans have a saying about Negroes that goes, “Juntos per no revueltos"—together but not mixed. Negroes, on the other hand, tend to think of Mexican-Americans—as do many Anglosas—as “quaint and foreign.”
One hundred and eighty years after the small group of black and brown people settled in what became Los Angeles, however, six Mexican-American children and six Negro children are involved in a Superior Court ruling in which Judge Alfred Gitelson ordered the Los Angeles school district desegregated.
When the Los Angeles school district is finally integrated, history will again have thrown the blacks and the browns together again.
To understand why Mexicans and Negroes are having their differences now, one must look at it in the light of the black revolution.
The revolution exploded partly from a condition which had been known all along but which became the basis for a black-white confrontation: the color of one’s skin is all too important in America. White is good. Black is bad.
Faced with an identity crisis, many Mexican-Americans—especially the young who were excited by black militancy—decided they had been misled by the Mexican establishment into apathetic confusion.
It came as a shock at first: Mexican-Americans felt caught between the white and the black. Though counted as “White” by the Bureau of Census, Mexican-Americans were never really thought of as such.
The ambivalence felt vaguely and in silence for so long seemed to crystalize in the wake of the black revolution. A Mexican-American was neither Mexican nor American. He was neither white nor black.
One of the reasons for the growing distrust between Mexicans and Negroes is that the Chicano is still searching for his identity.
As yet, most Mexican-Americans seem not to identify with any one single overriding problem as Americans. Though they know they’re somehow different, many still cling to the idea that Mexican-Americans are Caucasian, thus white, this “one of the boys.”
Many prove it: By looking and living like white Americans, by obtaining and keeping good jobs and by intermarrying with Anglos who never think of it as a “mixed marriage.”
Many others, however, feel they have for too long been cheated by tacitly agreeing to be Caucasian in name only. These Mexican-Americans, especially the young Chicanos, feel that the coalition with the Anglos has failed.
And they’re not about ready to form a new coalition—this time with the blacks—until they, the Chicanos, find their own identity in their own way.
Column: Mexican-American’s Dilemma: He’s Unfit in Either Language
By RUBEN SALAZAR, FEB. 27, 1970
”... A Los Angeles Police Department officer was beating a Spanish-speaking motorist, calling him a dirty Mexican. Occupants in the motorist’s car yelled out to the police officer that the person he was beating was not a Mexican, but that he was a Nicaraguan.
“At that moment the officer stopped beating him and obtained medical help for him.”
So testified a psychiatric social worker at a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in December of 1968.
The testimony gives some insight into the complicated subject of the differences amoung the Spanish-speaking people in the United States.
Mexican-Americans, about 8 million of the 10 million Spanish-speaking people in the country, are, ironically, among the most abused of this minority simply because they’re Americans. This holds true for Puerto Ricans who are also Americans.
Non-American Spanish-speaking people, like Nicaraguans, Argentinians and Colombians, are as the police officer knew instantly, treated with more respect.
The reason may be that Americans, originally immigrants to this country, show more consideration for other immigrants than they do for indigenous people like Mexican-Americans and Indians.
Because of the civil rights movement, there has been an intense search for Spanish-speaking teachers, journalists, social workers, salesmen, etc.
Invariably, when found, these specialists turn out to be non-American Spanish-speaking people—Cubans, Central Americans, South Americans and native Mexicans.
The reason is simple. Non-American Spanish-speaking people have a better education—and so speak good Spanish—and assimilate well into Anglo society because they came here expressly to do this.
The Mexican-American, meanwhile, many of whom speak neither good Spanish nor good English, are victims of an educational system which purports to “Americanize” them while downgrading their ethnic background.
For instance, the first truly bilingual education program in this country was set up not for Mexican-Americans but for Cubans in the wake of the Cuban crisis. Bilingual education was made available for Cuban refugees at Florida’s Dade County schools in 1963.
Yet, as late as December 1968, educators testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that Mexican-American children were being punished for speaking Spanish on school grounds in other parts of the country.
Cubans today, then, have a better chance of obtaining jobs requiring bilingual people—now that Spanish has been discovered as an asset instead of a liability—than do Mexican-Americans.
Belated bilingual education programs for Mexican-Americans are geared toward using the Spanish language as a tool only until the Chicano kid has learned enough English to overcome the “problem” of speaking Spanish. These are not truly bilingual programs, which should be teaching of both languages on an equal basis.
The truth of the matter is that despite our talk in the Southwest about “our great Spanish heritage” and the naming of our towns and streets in Spanish, the Spanish language has never been taken seriously by American educators even in areas where both languages could be learned together and correctly.
Too often the difference between a Mexican-American and non-American Spanish-speaking person is that the non-American can speak better Spanish than the Mexican-American—and so is more qualified for the emerging bilingual jobs.
And the difference between the Mexican-American and the Anglo-American is that the Anglo speaks better English than the Mexican-American and so is better equippped for the more conventional jobs.
The pattern could change when the American educational system is as considerate of Mexican-Americans as it was of Cubans in 1963.
Column: Chicanos vs. Traditionalists
By RUBEN SALAZAR, MARCH 6, 1970
Last Saturday’s Chicano Moratorium and the activities of Catolicos por La Raza dramatize the gulf which exists between the traditional-minded Mexican-Americans and the young activists.
Unless this is understood, observers can fall easily into the simplistic conclusions that the traditionalists are Tio Tacos (Uncle Toms) or that the activists are irresponsible punks.
Either conclusion misses the essence of the present Mexican-American condition.
Traditional-minded Mexican-Americans blush at the mention of the word Chicano. They blanch at the thought of being called brown people. The reason for this, outside of personal views, is the psychological makeup of the Mexican in general.
Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet-essayist-diplomat, has tried to explain it this way: “The Mexican, whether young or old, white or brown, general or lawyer, seems to me to be a person who shuts himself away to protect himself ... He is jealous of his privacy and that of others ... He passes through life like a man who has been flayed; everything can hurt him, including words and the very suspicion of words ...”
The Mexican, says Paz, “builds a wall of indifference and remoteness between reality and himself, a wall that is no less impenetrable for being invisible. The Mexican is always remote, from the world and from other people. And also from himself.”
It is any wonder, then, that the more conservative Mexican-Americans—and there are many of them—are embarrassed and angered at Chicanos (suspicious word) who say they don’t want to fight the war in Vietnam and Catolicos who are questioning the church and the world about them?
The Mexican, says Paz, wears his face as a mask and believes “that opening oneself up is a weakness or a betrayal.”
The Chicano activists are trying to rid themselves of their masks and to open themselves to themselves and to others. It is significant that in doing this they should pick as a means the Vietnam war and the Catholic Church.
That more than 3,000 people braved torrential rains last Saturday to participate in the Chicano Moratorium is important not because so many people showed distaste for the war—Anglos have done this in a bigger way—but because it was Mexican-Americans who did it.
Mexican-Americans, who include a disproportionate number of Medal of Honor winners and who, like the blacks, are suffering a disproportionate number of deaths in Vietnam, had up to now fought our wars without question.
It was part of the “machismo” tradition. When called to war, Mexican-Americans showed everyone how “macho” or manly they were and never questioned the justification for the war.
Mexicans, says Paz, judge manliness according to their “invulnerability to enemy arms or the impacts of the outside world. Stoicism is the most exalted of (Mexicans’) military and political attributes.”
The Chicano Moratorium strove to end this stoicism, which is hardly a democratic attribute.
“We weren’t shedding our machismo,” said a young marcher. “We were proving our machismo by asking the establishment the tough question: ‘Why are we dying overseas when the real struggle is at home?’”
When the Catolicos por La Raza demonstrated during a midnight Christmas mass last year, they were also breaking with tradition and asking tough questions at the cost of going through the ordeal of being tried for disturbing the peace.
A San Antonio teacher, testifying before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last year, said he has noted that the difference between Anglo and Mexican-American students is that when “some situation befalls the Mexican-American,” the Mexican-American tends to leave things up to God while the Anglo tries to solve it on his own.
Catolicos por La Raza, who greatly embarrassed the traditional-minded Mexican-Americans by their questioning of the Catholic Church’s relevance to present society, were breaking with this concept.
Chicanos and traditional-minded Mexican-Americans are suffering from the ever-present communications gap. Traditionalists, more concerned with, to them, chafing terms like Chicano, are not really listening to what the activists are saying. And the activists forget that tradition is hard to kill.
Column: Latin Newsmen, Police Chief Eat ... but Fail to Meet
By RUBEN SALAZAR, MARCH 13, 1970
The Los Angeles Latin press corps took Police Chief Ed Davis out to dinner the other night. The enchiladas were good but the conversation left both sides hungry for understanding.
The dinner had been planned for some time but it was the chief’s bad luck that it came on a night when Roosevelt High School was still much in the minds of the Latin newsmen.
It had been a week in which Spanish-speaking reporters had seen policemen drag teenage girls by the hair on the Roosevelt campus, a predominantly Mexican-American school. It had been a week in which a police captain tried to prevent a cameraman from a Spanish-language television station from filming a student disturbance by putting his hand in front of the camera’s lens.
It had been a week in which a Mexican-American editor with 25 years of service in the Spanish-speaking community was denied entrance to the Roosevelt campus because he had a sheriff’s press card and not a police press card. And it had been a week in which a policeman had yelled at the manager of a Spanish-language television station: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for filming this!” (a student walkout).
The Latin newsmen who had invited Chief Davis to dinner were not Chicano underground press types. On the contrary, many were more businessmen than newsmen and far more conservative than the average Anglo newsman.
Yet, on that night the Latin newsmen, while waiting for the chief to arrive, talked about the growing disrespect between the police department and the Spanish-speaking community and voiced the opinion that they now understood what the Walker Commission mean when it talked of a “police riot.”
It was the first time in memory that a Los Angeles police chief had publicly gotten together with a significant number of Spanish-speaking reporters and the newsmen were anxious to get to the guts of the agenda: finding ways to attain mutual respect between the Spanish-language press and the police department so that this respect can be reflected in the community.
It didn’t go well.
The chief started talking about a trip he had made recently to Mexico and his great admiration for the country and its pyramids. After a while, the chairman interrupted apologetically and said, “Chief, we know all about Mexico and the pyramids ... Could we get on with the business at hand ...”
Some of the newsmen insisted that the chief appoint a Spanish-speaking lieutenant for liaison between the Latin media and the police department. The chief explained patiently that this would be impossible because of budget problems but said he might assign a patrolman to the job.
One of the newsmen became indignant, as only touchy Latins can, and said that perhaps they would have to go Washington or the Latin embassies to get what they needed.
The chief scored a point by saying that he ran the police department and not President Nixon or anyone else and informed the newsmen that he, the chief, has just written the President telling him off. This would have been a pretty good lesson in democracy except that the chief chose to go further.
Telling the president off could not be done in Mexico, the chief told the Latin newsmen, because Mexico had a “Napoleonic” style of justice which to Americans smacked of “tyranny and dictatorship.”
This went over like a lead piñata especially with the newsmen who work for Mexico City newspapers.
It was decided that another meeting be held between Latin newsmen and the chief to further explore their problems. Both sides left feeling frustrated—but not too unhappy over the possibility that a line of communication might be opening. After all, when you eat enchiladas together, it’s a beginning.
Column: L.A. School Board’s Offspring Turns Against Its Parents
By RUBEN SALAZAR, MARCH 20, 1970
When the Los Angeles school board created the Mexican-American Education Commission it was with the hope that it had conceived an ally.
Like many parents, however, the board is discovering that it may have given birth to a rebellious appendage.
Nothing produces distrust more quickly than a crisis and the Roosevelt High School dilemma has alienated the commission from the board in a way which stems from a lack of mutual admiration.
Almost a year old, the commission was set up to help the board unravel some of the intricacies involved in solving the unique problems of the Mexican-American student.
A sort of cruel joke, though, seemed to have been perpetrated when it was decided that the commission be composed of 40 people—40 people!
Its first meeting was held on May 5, 1969—the day of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo. Philosophically, at least, the commission took on the task of helping improve the education of Mexican-American kids so that the massive East Los Angeles high school walkouts of 1968 would not be repeated.
On the second anniversary of the walkouts, Roosevelt seemed on the verge of leading new ones. The situation deteriorated to the point where school administrators saw fit to call in large numbers of policemen which resulted in the arrest of more than 100 people.
The police have been criticized for their “over-reaction” by, among many others, Los Angeles congressman Edward Roybal. But, as one militant teacher leader has pointed out, “Isn’t that kind of beating a dead horse? It’s the real issue one of why school administrators felt incompetent to handle the situation themselves and had to run to the police for help?”
Where, one might wonder, was the Mexican-American Education Commission when the crisis was building up? The commission, after all, had been formed amidst much fanfare that it was the missing link which would help unify the community and school administrators.
A commission of 40 individualists may be too unwieldy to deal with subtle educational problems but surely such a large commission could have at least polled the students to find out what was going on.
According to the commission’s chairman, the Rev. Vahac Mardirosian, school administrators preferred to call the police instead of the commission when trouble was brewing.
“I heard about it second hand,” says Mr. Mardirosian. The Rev. Horacio Quinones, the head of the commission’s grievance committee, went to Roosevelt to investigate and was denied entrance — as were parents concerned with the impending disturbance.
School board member Dr. Julian Nava points out correctly that the commission was never intended to be a “troubleshooter” but adds that if the commission had been consulted maybe the calling of the police might have been unnecessary. Mr. Mardirosian categorically insists that the police were called “prematurely.”
Monday quarterbacking in these cases is about as useful as an apology after being knocked down by a billy club.
But the fact remains that communication between the commission and school administrators (including the school board) has diminished as the commission’s communication with activist students has increased.
The Rev. Mardirosian and his followers in the commission are supporting the youths fight reinstate controversial school teacher Sal Castro and encouraged the Chicano Moratorium.
The more conservative members of the original 40-member commission have for some time stopped participating in the group’s activities as Mr. Mardirosian has moved closer to the students. He now talks of inviting 15 high school and college students to join the commission.
The commission, then, has become totally activist-student oriented. As long as the school board has created the commission—and even given it a budget—wouldn’t it be a good idea to consult it before the police are called again?
Column: Police-Community Rift
By RUBEN SALAZAR, APRIL 3, 1970
Los Angeles police sergeant Robert J. Thoms, formerly a “community relations” officer, has gone into the intelligence business and has testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about what he considered subversive and violent organizations.
As a community relations officer from March 26, 1967 to Feb. 11 1968, Sgt. Thoms worked with many of the barrio and ghetto organizations which, if nothing else, understand the problems of people who do not relate to, much less participate in, the mainstream of American life.
Thoms gained the confidence of leaders in the barrios and ghettos who felt there was still hope for at least a working relationship between frustrated and disadvantaged communities and the equally frustrated but relatively powerful police force.
After working for a year in this sensitive area, Sgt. Thoms was transffered by the police department to intelligence work.
The next time the communities, which had known Sgt. Thoms as a community relations officer, heard from him was as an an intelligence officer testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating subversive and violent organizations.
Sgt. Thoms told the subcommittee chaired by Sen. Thomas J. Dodd that “the organizations in Los Angeles that are considered to be violent and subversive in nature are: Ron Karenga’s US, the Black Congress, the Black Panther Party, the Friends of the Panthers, and the Brown Berets.
In the 59-page report, however, Sgt. Thoms also touches upon such diverse organizations as the Ford Foundation, the League of United Citizens to Help Addicts, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the UCLA Industrial Relations Commission and the East Los Angeles Community Union.
Nowhere does Sgt. Thoms say that these organizations are subversive or violent but he leaves the clear impression that they are somehow unsavory. J.G. Sourwine, the subcommittee’s chief counsel, asked Thom, for example, why the sergeant had mentioned the Los Angeles Community Union.
“Is the organization a violent on?” Sourwine asked.
“No, sir,” answered Thoms.
“Perhaps I do not follow you.” press Sourwine. “Why is it brought out here?”
To this Sgt. Thoms answered: “Just as an example of the umbrella organizations we deal with which will contain some good intentioned organizations to give it an air of respectability.”
On page 22, Sgt. Thoms tells the subcommittee that “Next I would like to with the federal funding of various organizations in the Los Angeles area.”
Sourwine: “Funding subversive and violent organizations?”
Thoms: “Yes, sir.”
Sourwine: “Go ahead.”
Thoms: “One program known as the education opportunities program (EOP) for the California State College of Los Angeles, was funded in 1968 in the amount of $250,000 for 123 students.”
After explaining that the money was used to give minority students “a monthly stipend for attending school and also used for books and a place to live,” Sgt. Thoms said: “I can document that there are 43 students (of the 123 students receiving EOP funds, presumably) attending Cal State College at Los Angeles that belong to militant organizations in Los Angeles.”
Perhaps the most revealing part of the Thoms testimony is when Chief Counsel Sourwin asks Thoms whether his information was gathered from a reliable source. Yes, answer Thoms, “the report was made public in May in Chicago.”
Who put the report out? asks Sourwine. “I made the report to a convention of the International Security Conference.”
Retorts Sourwine: “When I ask if it came from a source you believe to be reliable I am not surprised you said, ‘Yes.’”
Thom’s report should be read by all Americans concerned with the problem of the credibility gap.
Column: Reason in Washington, Passion in Denver—What Will Work?
By RUBEN SALAZAR APRIL 10, 1970
Washington — If Daniel Moynihan speaks of “benign neglect” for the black, what is in store for the Chicano?
This was in the minds of some of us who came here at the invitation of the Urban Coalition to discuss the image of the Spanish-speaking people in the mass media.
It was not long before the chilling truth overcame us. Image? Hell, Washington doesn’t even know the Chicano exists, so how can we talk about image?
But we did. The 15 of us—Chicano newsmen, educators, consultants—went through the motions of telling the attentive Urban Coalition people how the news media and the advertising, television and motion picture industries hurt the sensibilities of the Spanish-speaking people.
The Coalition set up a meeting for us with members of the Federal Communications Commission — including rebel commissioner Nicholas Johnson. During that meeting, it suddenly dawned on me how quaint the Chicano group must seem to Washington bureaucrats.
I got the strong impression that the FCC is not really a regulatory agency in that it does not sit in Washington as a judge ready to correct, for instance, any inequities perpetrated on the Chicano by radio or television.
“The FCC is not only gutless in this respect, but also impotent when it tries to do something on its own,” I was told by an FCC staffman.
The FCC, however, is responsive to community or political pressure, I was assured.
Power, Chicano. Power. That’s what Washington understands.
This obvious conclusion is sometimes hard to come by for those of us who are conditioned to think that reason, information and patience will eventually triumph.
At least one of us, though, seemed to understand Washington instinctively better than most of us. He was a young Chicano from Texas who wore a bush jacket and a badge with Chicano Power on it.
After two days of deliberation and exchange of ideas in the plush Mayflower Hotel and in the ultra-modern Urban Coalition building, the young Chicano concluded:
“About the only thing accomplished these two days was that the Xerox machine worked overtime.”
He then took a plane to Denver to attend Corky Gonzales’ Chicano Youth Liberation Conference.
In Denver, Gonzales, an ex-prize fighter and poet, told a crowd of 3,000 young Chicanos, like the ones who left Washington in disgust, that growing Chicano militancy “has turned a spark into fire.” With clenched fists in the air, the young Chicanos screamed “Chicano power!” Then, without the help of Xerox machines, they started the job of uniting for “la causa.”
In these days of “benign neglect” one wonders how much good such a meeting as the one we had with the Urban Coalition does. And come to think of it, what came out of the dozens of meetings and conferences we’ve attended throughout the years?
After two days in Washington, the melancholy thought arises that representatives of the Denver Chicanos would have more of an impact on Washington than the 15 of us who went to Washington with our carefully prepared papers which probably moved no one except the Xerox machine.
Column: Maligned Word: Mexican
By RUBEN SALAZAR, APRIL 17, 1970
Mexican. The good name has been vilified for so long that even in the Southwest, where Mexicans are as plentiful as Yankees in New England, the word is used cautiously.
Most Mexican-Americans have experienced the wary question from an Anglo: “You’re Spanish, aren’t you?” or “Are you Latin?” Rarely will the Anglo venture: “You’re Mexican aren’t you?”
The reason is that the word Mexican has been dragged through the mud of racism since the Anglos arrived in the Southwest. History tells us that when King Fisher, the famous Texas gunman, was asked how many notched he had on his gun, he answered: “Thirty-seven—not counting Mexicans.”
“Remember the Alamo!” is still used as an anti-Mexican insult where “Remember Pearl Harbor” has been forgotten.
Carey McWiliams in his enlightening “North From Mexico” notes that the word “greaser” was well-known in early California and that it was defined as “Mexican; an opprobrious term.” He also reports that “greaser” is “California slang for a mixed race of Mexican and Indians.”
“Greaser,” McWilliams points out, is defined in the Century Dictionary as “a native Mexican ... originally applied contemptuously by the Americans of the Southwestern United States to Mexicans.”
All this, and more, has contributed to the psychological crippling of the Mexican-American when it comes to the word Mexican. He is consciously ashamed of it.
State Sen. Jose Bernal of Texas told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last year that the “schools have not given us any reason to be proud” of being Mexican. People running the schools “have tried to take away our language,” the senator continued, and so Mexican-American children very early are embarrassed by the Spanish language and by being Mexican.
One of the reasons for this, Bernal told the commission, is that “it has been inculcated” in the minds of grammar school children that the Mexican “is no good” by means of, for instance, overly and distortedly emphasizing the Battle of the Alamo and ignoring all contributions by Mexicans in the Southwest.
Unfortunately, California Superior Judge Gerald S. Chargin has dragged the word Mexican to a new low. In sentencing a 17-year-old Mexican-American boy for incest in San Jose last Sept.2, Judge Chargin looked down from the bench and told this American citizen that “we ought to send you out of the country—send you back to Mexico ... You ought to commit suicide. That’s what I think of people of this kind. You are lower than animals and haven’t the right to live in organized society—just miserable, lousy, rotten people.
Is it any wonder, then, that the Mexican-American community is bitterly disappointed in that the California Commission on Judicial Qualifications recommended that the Supreme Court publicly censure Judge Chargin instead of recommending that he be removed from the bench?
The commission, in making its recommendation, calls Chargin’s remarks “improper and inexcusable” and says they “constituted conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute.”
The commission goes on to say, however, that “there is no evidence of bias or prejudice by (the judge) except for the incident of Sept. 2, 1969. There is evidence,” concludes the commission, “that apart from this (this judge) has been a tolerant and compassionate judge with a background of understanding and interest in the problems of the underprivileged and ethnic minorities.”
The Mexican-American community seems not to buy that. The general feeling seems to be that if Judge Harrold Carswell was denied on a seat on Supreme Court for, among other reasons, making a racist speech in his youth, Judge Chargin should be remove from the bench for making anti-Mexican remarks, on record, from the bench.
This, the community seems to feel, would help cleanse the much maligned word Mexican.
Column: The ‘Wetback’ Problem Has More Than Just One Side
By RUBEN SALAZAR, APRIL 24, 1970
When la migra calls the Mexican trembles.
La migra is Chicano slang for the U.S. Immigration Service, which, with the Border Patrol, plays an important and sometimes terrifying role in the lives of thousands of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and other Latins in the Southwest.
A recent crackdown by the immigration department against illegal entrants in the Los Angeles area has again dramatized the human tragedy which can occur when a poor country, Mexico, borders a rich country, the United States.
The fact that at least one American citizen, a mentally retarded Mexican-American boy, was mistakenly deported in the immigration service dragnet indicates the vulnerability of the underprivileged Chicano to la migra’s power.
Wetbacks and Chicanos look alike to the border patrolman.
The problem of illegal entrants to the United States can be looked at very coldly. It is illegal to enter the United States without the proper papers, so, from time to time, these people must be rounded up and deported.
A closer look at why Los Angeles has become the wetback capital of the world, however, shows why it’s unfair to blame only the illegal entrant for the breakdown of the law.
Why is it that it is estimated that at certain times of the year there are at least 80,000 wetbacks working in California? Because employers are willing to hire them.
A wetback lives in constant fear. Fear that he will be discovered. Fear of what might happen to him once la migra finds him. Fear that he will not be paid before being deported.
The wetback employers know no such fear. There is no law against hiring wetbacks. There is only a law against being a wetback.
A sweat shop employer of low-paid wetbacks has only one small work—the temporary stoppage of production between the time his wetbacks are discovered in his plant and the time the next wave of wetbacks arrives.
When the wetback is caught he is jailed and deported. Nothing, however, happens to the employer. As a matter of fact, the employer can gain from the wetback raid on his plant because he can easily get away without paying the wetbacks’ salaries due at the time of the arrests.
State Sen. Lewis Sherman, a Republican from Alameda County, would like to change this. He feels the employer should bear some of the responsibility for the wetback situation. He has introduced a bill (S.B. 1091) which would make it a misdemeanor to knowingly hire wetbacks. Under the proposed law, the employer could be fined as much as $500 for each wetback he hires. Sen. Sherman contends that with “reasonable care” employers could detect wetbacks from legal workers.
Most people concerned with the problem feel this would help immensely.
But it would probably not solve the basic reason for the wetback problem: poor Mexicans willing to take a chance at arrest for what they think will be a good job and the employers willing to take a chance at getting caught because they want cheap labor.
Bert Corona, a leader in the Mexican-American Political Assn., claims that the immigration service, in its dragnets, is “conducting a reign of terror and exploitation against the Mexican people” and that among the 1,600 recently deported there were persons born in the United States who did not have their papers with them, Mexicans with valid tourist visas, persons separated from their families.
The policeman, this time the immigration and border patrol man, is invariably accused of “brutality” when enforcing the law and undoubtedly they have made mistakes.
But anyone who has seen the fetid shacks in which potential wetbacks live on the Mexican side of the border can better understand why these people become wetbacks. In comparison, the detention center for wetback sin El Centro—called a “concentration camp” by Chicano activists—looks like a luxury hotel.
The point is that Mexico has a grave poverty problem which is growing alarmingly. Mexico, with its limited resources, has grown from a nation of 15 million 1910 to an estimated 44 million in 1966. In another 10 years some Mexican demographers estimate an increase to 61 million people and by 1980, to 72 million. Many, many of these will be potential wetbacks.
Though Sen. Sherman’s proposed bill should help alleviate the wetback problem, it is obvious that the United States and Mexico must talk and plan on the highest level to forestall an even more serious wetback explosion in the future.
Column: Mexican-Americans’ Problems With the Legal System Viewed
By RUBEN SALAZAR, MAY 1, 1970
Justice is the most important word in race relations. Yet too many Mexican-Americans in the Southwest feel with David Sanchez, Los Angeles Brown Beret leader, that “to Anglos justice means just us.”
A report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights helps explains why Sanchez can successfully exploit his bitter theory. Called “Mexican-Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest,” the 135-page study concludes:
“The report paints a bleak picture of the relationship between Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and the agencies which administer justice in those states. The attitude of Mexican-Americans toward the institutions responsible for the administration of justice—the police, the courts and related agencies—is distrustful, fearful and hostile. Police departments, courts, the law itself are viewed as Anglo institutions in which Mexican-Americans have no stake and form which they do not expect fair treatment.”
La Ley or The Law, as Mexican-Americans call the administration of justice, takes forms that Anglos—and even blacks—never have to experience.
A Mexican-American, though a third generation American, for instance, may have to prove with documents that he is an American citizen at border crossings while a blue-eyed German immigrant, for example, can cross by merely saying “American.”
Besides the usual complaints made by racial minorities about police brutality and harassment, Mexican-Americans have an added problem: sometimes they literally cannot communicate with police.
The commission report tells of a young Mexican-American who, while trying to quell a potentially explosive situation, was arrested because the police officers, who did not understand Spanish, thought he was trying to incite the crowd to riot.
In another case, the report tells of a Mexican-American in Arizona who was held in jail for two months on a charge of sexually molesting his daughter. As it turned out, he had been mistakenly charged with the offense, but he did not voice any objections at the time because he did not understand the proceedings and no interpreter was provided for him.
A probation officer, who spoke Spanish, later talked to the defendant and upon learning the facts explained the situation to the local magistrate, who dismissed the case.
Among the most startling conclusions made by the commission, which is chaired by Notre Dame president Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, concerns California grand juries. A commission study of the grand jury system of 22 California counties concluded that discrimination against Mexican-Americans in juror selection is as severe as—some times more than—discrimination against Negroes in grand juries in the South.
“In California,” the commission points out, “grand jurors have the authority to both indict persons for crimes and to investigate and evaluate the administration of local government. Because of this broad authority, exclusion of Mexican-Americans from grand juries not only may affect their ability to receive fair and impartial criminal justice, but also is likely to render grand juries less vigorous in inquiring into and exposing governmental deficiencies—in police departments and school systems, for example—adversely affecting “Mexican-Americans.”
“In Los Angeles County, with almost 500,000 eligible Spanish surnamed residents, only four served as grand jurors during the 12 years studied,” reports the commission, “while Orange County, California’s fifth largest (eligible Spanish surname population estimated at 44,000) had only one Spanish surnamed person on its grand jury lsits in the 12-year period.
Among the many other “findings” listed in the commission’s report are that “there is evidence of widespread patterns of police misconduct against Mexican-Americans in the Southwest,” and that “in several instances law enforcement officers interfered with Mexican-American organizational efforts aimed at improving the conditions of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest” and that “local officials in the Southwest abuse their discretion in setting excessive bail to punish Mexican-Americans rather than to guarantee their appearance for trial.”
As if to warn that continuing such practicies will only win new converts to Sanchez’ philosophy that “to Anglos justice means just us,” the commission concludes:
“The commission recognizes that individual law enforcement officers and court officers have made positive efforts to improve the administration of justice in their communities. The fact however, that Mexican-Americans see justice being administered unevenly throughout the Southwest tends to weaken their confidence in an otherwise fair system. In addition, the absence of impartial tribunals in which claims of mistreatment can be litigated to a conclusion accepted by all sides tends to breed further distrust and cynicism.”
Column: Consecration of Bishop Flores Shows the Strength of an Idea
By RUBEN SALAZAR, MAY 8, 1970
The consecration of Patricio Flores, a former Texas migrant farm worker, as a bishop of the Catholic Church indicated once more the church’s growing sensitivity to the Chicano community.
The mass of consecration held Tuesday in San Antonio on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo was unusual in many ways. The ceremony was conducted in English, Spanish and Latin and televised in Los Angeles, San Antonio and Mexico City.
Instead of holding the rite in an august cathedral, it was held in an informal convention center to accomodate large numbers of la raza who applauded enthusiastically—unheard of in such ceremonies.
The music came not from a serious choir or majestic organ but from a joyful mariachi band.
Among the special guests of the 41-year-old cleric, who became the first Mexican-American to be raised to the hierarchy of the church, were Cesar Chavez, Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo of Cuernavaca, Mexico and Jose Angel Gutierrez, leader of the activist Chicano organization MAYO.
The guest list alone showed how involved Bishop Flores is in the problems of the Mexican-American, the farm worker, the young.
Chavez, who read one of the epistles at the mass of consecration, had already been recognized by the church as an important leader when the church’s Bishops Committee announced in Los Angeles April 1 that a “breakthrough” agreement between Chavez’ grape strikers and some California grape growers had been reached with the help of the Catholic Church.
This was a bitter defeat for those who claimed Chavez was not the true leader of the grape strikers. The defeat for growers wanting to discredit Chavez became more poignant when Archbishop Timothy Manning of Los Angeles told a press conference that he hoped the agreement between Chavez and a small number of growers “will be but the beginning of a chain of such contracts.”
The fact that Bishop Mendez Arceo of Cuernavaca was present at the consecration of Bishop Flores publicly revealed the new bishop’s affinity to the church’s liberal wing. Bishop Mendez Arceo, a maverick in the Mexican conservative hierarchy, has many times proclaimed himself a staunch Zapatista. Emiliano Zapata, a Mexican revolutionary and a land reformer, is a hero of the Chicano movement.
Bishop Mendez in 1968 was the only Mexican bishop who refused to sign a declaration in support of the Pope’s new ban on artificial contraception and was the only member of the Mexican hierarchy to condemn the Mexican government’s repressive acts against students in the riots at the University of Mexico.
The invitation of Gutierrez, MAYO leader, who also read an epistle at the Flores consecration, probably shocked the Texas establishment because Gutierrez is known as one of the most militant Chicano youth leaders in the Southwest. Unlike Chavez, who is softspoken and dislikes the Chicano militant talk, Gutierrez is a forceful speaker on what he considers “Anglo crimes” ranging from the Vietnam war to the draft to bad Mexican-American education and the “suppression” of Mexican culture in the United States.
Bishop Flores, who with his parents and eight brothers and sisters migrated from farm job to farm job in his youth, believes communication between the church and the so-called militants must remain open.
Bishop Flores’ consecration was a remarkable spectacle: guitar-playing mariachis mingling with miter-wearing bishops and barrio Chicanos mixing it up with plume-hatted and white-tie-and-tailed Knights of Columbus.
It gave one hope that an ideal, like the Catholic Church, can still bring people together.
Column: Best Kept Secret in L.A. Television
MAY 8, 1970
When I left the staff of The Times ago to become the news director at KMEX, the Spanish-language TV station (Channel 34), it was after a great deal of soul searching, plus explanations to co-workers who asked me: “KM ... what?”
Even though KMEX is a station whose newscasts have more viewers than George Putnam or Tom Reddin and almost as many as KABC’s Eyewitness News, it is not that well known except among Spanish-speaking Angelenos.
The first time I heard of KMEX was some eight years ago when a man came to my home and installed a UHF converter on my TV set so I could write an occasional article about the state’s programs in The Times.
From time to time, I wrote a piece and then lost interest.
I became a foreign correspondent in Vietnam, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. In January, 1968, I came back to Los Angeles to cover the Mexican-American story which was changing radically since I had last covered the community.
Starting from zero, KMEX, I learned, was now reaching about 1.5 million viewers and had become first commercial UHF station to win a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences award—for its documentary on prominent Mexican-Americans.
Impressed with figures
Advertisers, at first skeptical about Spanish-language television, finally became impressed with the figures: Los Angeles is the sixth largest Spanish market in the world. And though New York is the fifth largest Spanish market, national advertisers have been more attracted by Los Angeles where the average Latin yearly income is $5,762 as compared to $4,610 in New York.
But news was what I was interested in. I learned that under the direction of Joseph S. Rank, KMEX’s general manager, and Danny Villanueva, formerly news director and now station manager, KMEX had become the prime communicator in the Southland’s Latin community.
Los Angeles’ “best kept secret” as Rank puts it, is that KMEX’s newscast (Noticiero 34) has astounding ratings. Med-Mark Inc., which conducts surveys of UHF-station audiences, reports that Noticiero 34 (Monday through Firday 6:30-7:30 p.m.) has a daily audience of just under 300,000. George Putnam’s News, according to American Research Bureau figures, has an audience of just under 200,000 while Tom Reddin’s News is 150,000 at 5 p.m. and 100,000 at 10 p.m.
The statistics show that KMEX news, with close to 300,000 viewers, is just a few thousand below KABC’s Eyewitness News and KNBC News.
John Tebble in a Saturday Review article entitled “Newest TV Boom: Spanish-Language Stations” says Med-Mark Inc. found “illuminating” statistics in its surveys of Spanish-language television.
”... while many Americans with Spanish surnames were bilingual,” writes Tebbel, “they strongly preferred Spanish-language broadcasting even though they had no trouble understanding the English programs. Moreover, they were quick to develop a loyalty to advertised produced—a brand loyalty far exceeding any exhibited by Anglo-American viewers—and they were also more receptive to advertisers’ promotional campaigns.”
One Myth Dispelled
Who are most of these people who watch Spanish-language television? Old people from the old country who never learned English? Med-Mark survey dispel this myth. At KMEX, for instance, among the largest audience groups are men ages 18 to 34 and women 18 to 49.
The reason, undoubtedly, is a newly gained pride in the Spanish language by the nation’s second largest minority. The California Supreme Court recently recognized the importance of the Spanish-language news media when it ruled that Spanish-speaking citizens, who do not speak English, are entitled to vote just like any other American citizen. The reason, the court said, is that the Spanish news media furnishes enough information to make Spanish-speaking people qualified voters.
It is estimated that by 1975 there will be 15 million Spanish-speaking people in the United States. KMEX, part of the Spanish International Network, which includes KWEX in San Antonio, WXTV in New York and stations in five border cities, is now reaching some 10 million Latins.
I still miss newspaper work, but it’s good to know that the phrase, “Aqui se habla espanol” has a future.
Column: Mexican-Americans Come Out 2nd Best in High School Course
MAY 15, 1970
“The young Mexican-American husband must show his male acquaintances that he has more sexual energy than his wife can accommodate. To prove his prowess, he often continues the sexual hunt of his premarital days. He may demonstrate his physical and financial resources by visiting (a house of prostitution) with drinking companions after an evening in a tavern. The most convincing way of proving machismo and financial ability is to keep a mistress in a second household known as a casa chica.”
A quote from a racist or pornographic tract? No, it’s from a paper until recently used in a Pomona high school sophomore class to teach Mexican-American culture.
Before the instructional material was ordered removed by the board of education, Victor Sherreitt, principal of Ganesha High School, tried to defend the paper in this manner:
“At the beginning of each semester, every teacher looks across his class at inquiring students. In their eyes you see one question formed—'Are you, Mr. Teacher, a phony? Are you going to tell it the way it is?’
“The course, cultural anthropology, offered in the 10th grade is a study of man and his society. In an attempt to have students gain a broad knowledge of the diverse nature of American society, this essay was incorporated into the unit on family and society.”
One wonders if Sherreitt would agree then, that high school sophomores learning about Anglo culture should be taught about Anglo martini-guzzling, pill-popping, wife-swapping suburbanites?
Sherreitt and the social science teachers who incorporated the paper in the course do not seem to realize that the material contains blatant stereotyping.
One of the reasons Mexican-Americans object to the Frito Bandito television commercial is that it stereotypes Mexican-Americans as ridiculous, sleazy bandit types. This can badly damage the self-image of young, impressionable Mexican-American minds and feed prejudice to young, impressionable Anglo minds.
The Ganesha High School paper stereotypes the Mexican-Americans in many ways but tends to emphasize sexual stereotyping. In a section called Marital Conflict, the paper says in part:
“Sexual promiscuity on the part of the wife is a heinous crime. So fragile is the woman’s purity, according to Mexican-American belief, that one sexual indiscretion inevitably leads to a life of complete sexual abandon. No Mexican-American man would remain with a promiscuous wife unless he is already so debased that nothing matters ...”
Then the paper gives an example. Reynaldo’s “excessive drinking interferes with the employment he needs to provide money for liquor. Quenching his thirst is more important to him than sex or respectability so he allows his wife, Flora, to have a generous Anglo lover. Flora maintains this illicit relationship partly to punish Reynaldo for his failings. Her shame about her promiscuity leads her to give her husband most of the money she receives from her lover ...”
Though the paper is no longer used in the course on Mexican-American culture, its very existence and Principal Sherreitt’s written defense of it have left a deep wound in Pomona’s Mexican-American community.
Sherreitt stoutly defends his social science department and says the controversial paper was “misinterpreted or taken out of context.”
Mrs. Ascension Garcia, a school employee who prompted the protest to the board of education, thinks the paper has polarized Pomona’s minority population.
“Suddenly we realized that though Mexican-Americans and Negroes comprise 40% of the 90,000 Pomona population there is not one Mexican-American or Negro school principal or even vice principal,” says Mrs. Garcia.
“So we Mexican-Americans and Negroes have decided to form a coalition to fight the school district’s lack of sensitivity.”
Column: Attack on Barrio, Ghetto Units Helps Explain Rising Alienation
MAY 22, 1970
In the barrios and ghettos the word “repression” is heard these days.
“Repression” is an ugly word. Those who don’t live in the barrio and ghettos must wonder how people who do live in them can use such a word about the attitude of “the Establishment.”
A report compiled by Los Angeles City Council President John S. Gibson Jr. and Councilman Arthur K. Snyder may help explain. For the report seems calculated to destroy some community organizations devoted to improving conditions for Mexican-Americans and Negroes.
As public officials the councilmen have the right, nay, the obligation, to probe public-funded organizations to ascertain whether they’re doing their job.
But the way it’s done is of the utmost importance if any semblance of understanding by the establishment for the barrio and ghetto people is to remain.
The 50-page report is, in its own words, “a sampling of federally funded agencies aiding and abetting militant individuals and groups.” The guilty parties, say the councilmen, include the Western Center on Law and Poverty, Neighborhood Adult Participation Project (NAPP), Social Action Training Center, Teen Post Summer Project, and Education Opportunities Project (EOP).
The material, which includes not only confidential police reports but intra-police department correspondence, could be highly damaging to the organizations and their directors.
The report is directed to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce which was sponsoring a “leadership trip” to Washington. In a cover letter to J. Donald Hanauer, chamber general manager, Gibson writes in part: “I will appreciate your reviewing the material and if possible present same to the proper officials in the federal government.”
In a letter by Snyder included in the report, the councilman ends it in this manner: “Any assistance that can be given in the termination of the NAPP program will be to the benefit of Los Angeles and to the benefit of the people of the United States of America.”
Snyder accuses NAPP of “diverting their energies into creating ‘revolutionary change’” and, continues the letter, “in support of my opinions, I have attached 10 exhibits in the form of documents.” “Document” four concerns “summary of criminal and subversive backgrounds of NAPP salaried leadership from the same agency.”
The report marked “confidential” notes that Opal C. Jones, NAPP executive director, has no Los Angeles police department criminal record but adds that on Feb. 28, 1964, Mrs. Jones, “received laudatory comment in the West Coast Communist newspaper, “People’s World,” following her participation as a panelist at a Los Angeles high School forum on youth.”
One can only ask: Can Mrs. Jones control what the People’s World writes?
The report also notes that Bill Watkins, NAPP assistance directory, has no Los Angeles police department criminal record but that on January, 1969, “The name ‘Bill Watkins’ (was) found in the personal notebook of a female student arrested during San Fernando Valley State College disruptions.” This smacks of McCarthyism.
“Document” six concerns a “political meeting at a NAPP center.” The document is a two-paragraph story from the Jan. 18 Highland Park News-Herald Journal which reads:
“The Neighborhood Adult Participation Project is sponsoring an informal discussion session with Congressman John V. Tunney on Tuesday, at 9:15 a.m. at their Lincoln Heights Center, 175 N. Main St.
“Ed Bonilla, NAPP director, said that Tunney is a candidate for the U.S. Senate and urged local residents to attend and “ask questions relative to our Mexican-American community.”
Snyder does not explain how this relates to his charge that NAPP is trying to create “revolutionary change.”
The report is full of innuendos, vague charges and the police records of some community organization leaders. The organizations attacked were set up to help the non-establishment barrio and ghetto people. In some cases, people with police records who have “straightend out” can do this best.
This report, however, will greatly inhibit — as it was intended to — people who know the barrio and ghetto well and really want to help.
And this report, and the attitude it represents, can only help push the moderates into militancy.
Column: Chicanos’ Long Love Affair With Democratic Party Ends
MAY 29, 1970
Covering Mexican-American candidates in Tuesday’s primary election, a reporter can get the impression that they are more interested in gaining independence from the Democratic Party than they are in getting elected.
The Chicano candidate looks back in bitterness at the Democratic Party and casts a cynically hopeful eye at the Republican Party.
With the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, who publicly thanks the Chicano vote for its significant help in winning the California primary, the Mexican-American politician ended his long love affair with the Democratic Party.
“Actually,” says a Chicano party worker, “we discovered that it wasn’t a love affair at all but really a kept woman situation. The party took us for granted and gave little in return.”
This bitterness stems from the reapportionment of California’s political districts in 1962 by a Democratic Assembly under Jess Unruh.
“Those were hopeful days for the Chicano community,” recalls Bert Corona, a longtime Mexican-American activist. “We thought we could get at least four ‘safe’ Chicano districts. After all, the reapportionment committee was made up of so-called liberal members and who had been more to the party than the Mexican-Americans?”
“Instead, we got nothing.”
“Why do you think Ed Roybal can not afford to be a truly Chicano congressman?” asks Enrique (Hank) Lopez, another longtime Mexican-American activist. “Because the district he ended up with has more blacks and Anglos than Chicanos.”
Lopez, who ran for California secretary of state as a Democratic candidate 12 years ago, recalls his campaign with anger.
“The party gave me a piddling $1,500 to run a difficult statewide campaign and Pat Brown refused to appear on the same platform as me,” says Lopez. “Hell, the party wouldn’t even let me use a float in the parade.”
Lopez, who is now a New York attorney and author but is presently teaching a Chicano course at UC Riverside, feels strongly that one of the reasons black have been more successful politically than Chicanos is that they don’t allow either party to take them for granted.
“Blacks have learned to work within both parties and have not been blinded by unrealistic party loyalty as have Chicanos,” says Lopez.
Chicano politicians think that as a result of the treatment they have received from the Democratic Party, Mexican-Americans are becoming politically sophisticated enough to ignore their differences for the sake of eventually electing Chicano candidates.
The trend in the barrios right now is Chicanos first, party second. And the emphasis is on organization more than election.
Herman Sillas, who is running for state controller, is the only Mexican-American candidate officially endorsed by such Democratic bigwigs as Jess Unruh and Sen. Alan Cranston as well as the Mexican-American Unity Congress and the Mexican-American Political Assn.
The two Chicano organizations, however, have refused to endorse Unruh in the primary as they would have automatically in the past. Instead, they are supporting Richard Romo, a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for governor, if nothing else because he’s a Chicano.
At the Mexican-American Political Assn. endorsing convention in Fresno, MAPA president, Abe Tapia, a candidate for the 45th assembly district, urged Chicanos not to support “traditional liberal Anglo candidates, merely because they are ‘friends,’ unless they declare themselves as being in full support of all Mexican-American candidates as well as in full support of the farm workers and grape boycott.”
In the barrios at least, Tapia, who has been endorsed by Cesar Chavez, seems to be getting the message through.
As for the Republicans, Chicano politicians feel Mexican-Americans will fare better when a presumed Republican-dominated Assembly will reapportion political districts in 1972.
“In wanting to strengthen their own districts, the Republicans will tend to isolate the Chicano areas and so give us the Chicano districts the Democrats should have give us and never did,” say MAPA strategists.
Column: To the Chicanos, It Is How Narrowly a Candidate Lost
JUNE 5, 1970
When you’re as politically impotent as are Mexican-Americans, the extent of the latest election defeat takes on an exaggerated significance.
With characteristic resignation, the Chicano candidate on election night watches for future trends more than immediate victories.
Perhaps the “best defeat” for the Chicano in Tuesday’s election was that of Abe Tapia, candidate in the 45th Assembly District. Looking over the election returns, Tapia was realistically jubilant.
“I got 29% of the vote and the district is 30% Chicano,” Tapia said. “I went out for the Chicano vote and that is what I got. Why should I complain?”
President of the Mexican-American Political Assn., Tapia conducted a strictly Chicano campaign: no Anglo advisors, no emphasis on party labels, no compromises.
The advice he did take was from Cesar Chavez who told him to organize the barrios and not worry about immediate results. Tapia lost the election but won the Chicanos. He’s not too sure what it all means right now but he smiles happily when he talks about all those Chicanos who went to the polls for the first time in their lives.
Another Chicano who has an impressive loss was Oscar Z. Acosta, a militant attorney who received more than 100,000 votes for sheriff. During the campaign, he defended establishment-shaking Catolicos por la Raza, spent a couple of days in jail for contempt of court and vowed if elected do away with the sheriff’s department as it is now constituted.
Acosta, easily recognized in court by his loud ties and flowered attache case with a Chicano Power sticker, didn’t come close to Sheriff Pitchess’ 1,300,000 votes but did beat Everett Holladay, Monterey Park chief of police.
A poet of sorts, Acosta complains about a society which prefers “the soft lights to the glare of nakedness” and castigates “people too weak in character to raise the necessary issues.”
Looking back at his campaign, which was confined mostly to self dramatization, Acosta is most proud of running as a Chicano who “stuck to my guns and never copped out to a thing.”
Why he got 100,000 votes for sheriff will have to be analyzed by political pundits. But in the Chicano community Acosta’s impressive loss was an enigmatic ray of sunshine.
Then there were the Mexican-American candidates who tried to win by more conventional means. The best known, of course, was Dr. Julian Nava who ran for the “non-partisan” office of superintendent of public instruction.
He got 500,000 votes to Max Rafferty’s 2 million votes and Wilson Riles’ one million plus votes. The fact that Nava, a Mexican-American, and Riles, a Negro, ran against each other strained black-brown relationships—unavoidable in the minorities’ desperate scramble for meaningful participation in our society.
To the Chicano, despite many valid arguments to the contrary, Riles’ victory means simply that blacks receive more support and understanding by Californians in general than do Chicanos.
Jess Unruh tried to salve this situation by publicly supporting a Mexican-American for controller, Herman Sillas, but apparently it was too late. Silas lost to fellow Democrat Ronald Cameron and Chicanos, whether fairly or not, blame the Democratic Party. The party, they complain, never goes all out for a Chicano candidate.
The Chicano candidate who many have his last “impressive loss” and will be missed is Richard Calderon who lost the nomination in the 29th Congressional District to State Sen. George E. Danielson by about 2,000 votes.
This is Calderon’s fourth defeat in politics, the last two by very small margins.
Commenting on Tuesday’s results, Rep. Ed Roybal, the only Mexican-American California congressman, lamented that Calderon could have won if he had gotten the votes another Mexican-American, Isaac Ruiz Jr., received in the race. Calderon lost by 2,000 votes and Ruiz received 2,000 votes.
Ah, Chicanos.
Column: Equal Chance to Education? Not Down in the Barrios
JUNE 12, 1970
When the Chicano complains about having nightmares instead of the American dream, he’s usually told: “Education is the answer, amigo. Get an education and your problem will be solved.”
The premise behind this panacea, of course, is that the Mexican-American or any other deprived child can receive a meaningful education merely by wanting it.
One of the reasons for the turmoil in education today is that this smug premise is false. The poor kid has never gotten and is not now getting a decent break in obtaining a good education.
A look at the recently released results of Los Angeles elementary school achievement tests gives you an idea of the depressing situation.
Bellagio Rd. School and Belvedere School appear together alphabetically in the results but are worlds apart educationally. Bellagio Rd. School in affluent West Los Angeles while Belvedere School is in a poor East Los Angeles barrio.
Keeping in mind that the national average in these tests in 50, the scores made by these two schools are significant. In reading, Bellagio scored 69 points while Belvedere made 15 points. In language, Bellagio 67, Belvedere 18. In spelling, Bellagio 59, Belvedere 21. And in arithmetic Bellagio 68, Belvedere 21.
Affluence, by the way, seems to have some relation to good education. Windsor Hills School, for example, a 91% black school in a high socio-economic area of the West Side, ranked very high in the tests.
As it is very unlikely that Belvedere will ever become as affluent as Windsor Hills or Bellagio, the Belvedere kid must look to other means for a good education.
Judging by Belvedere’s scores it is not difficult to see why Chicanos average 8.6 years in school to the blacks’ 10.5 years and the Anglos’ 12.1 years.
But assuming, for a second, that a Belvedere kid works hard and manages to make reasonably good grades in high school, what are his chances of going to college? They’re as bad as the Belvedere scores.
With such projects as the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) under fire, it is almost impossible that such a Belvedere kid would ever make it to, say, UCLA.
Everybody agrees that there are too few Chicanos at UCLA, yet it was recently announced that the university’s High Potential Program, which helps minority students, will be cut in half from 100 students in 1969-70 to 50 in 1970-71.
But to talk about barrio or ghetto kids making it to UCLA is kind of ridiculous when you realize what’s happening to these kids in grammar school.
“For the past several years,” says a recent report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “school districts throughout California have been misplacing minority children in greater and greater disproportionate numbers into classes for the mentally retarded.”
The report concludes that “these misplaced children have been given a limited curriculum which has denied them an opportunity to develop their potential.”
The report charges that the fact that the state paid local districts a premium dollar for educable mentally retarded “seems to have encouraged the placement of culturally-different and hard-to-teach youngsters in these special classes.”
The commission found that in San Diego, for instance, parents were not properly notified or consulted prior to the placement of their children in mentally retarded classes. And, says the report, many parents who spoke Spanish only recall either signing nothing or signing what they assumed was a routine notice in written English.
These children placed in mentally retarded classes, says the report, “were victims of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Little was expected of them. They achieved little.”
One wonders how much of this criminal neglect is responsible for the fact that a Belvedere School kid can only score 15 points in a reading test while a Bellagio Rd. School kid can achieve 69 points.
Column: Don’t Make the ‘Bato Loco’ Go the Way of the Zoot Suiter
JUNE 19, 1970
A bato loco is a zoot suiter with a social conscience.
He may be an ex-con, a marijuana smoker and dangerously defiant. But the difference between the zoot suiter or pachuco of the early 40’s and a present bato loco, literally a crazy guy, is that the bato loco is experiencing a social revolution and so is learning and liking political power.
The difference is so important that unless we understand it we can contribute toward reverting the bato loco to an anarchistic zoot suiter.
An anarchistic zoot suiter, as we learned just before World War II, can be easily driven to violence. A bato loco, though impossible to convert into an Eagle Scout, can be dealt with on a political basis.
Because of the civil rights revolution, the so-called Establishment has deemed it necessary to accept innovations ranging from Head Start to Chicano Studies.
A countering “silent majority” revolution, however, is trying to reverse this acceptance and the trend today is to junk social innovations because, it is felt, they only “pamper” militants.
What we must realize is that it is easier to open a Pandora’s box than to close it.
The economy slowdown, the lingering Vietnam War and surging “hard hat” militancy are beginning to strip the bato loco of his newly gained social conscience.
“The gabacho (white man) never really changes,” a bato loco said recently. “He gives you an inch and takes away a yard.”
It is easy to understand the silent majority’s frustration with high taxes, disrespectful militancy and seemingly unending social innovations. But to the bato loco in the barrio this frustration is a luxury which he cannot afford and does not understand.
All the bato loco knows is that things were looking up for a while and that unlike his zoot-suiter predecessor he could get involved in such projects as the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project. Now he knows the heat is on and that such projects are being condemned by political and law-and-order leaders as subversive and money-wasting.
Stripped of his potential political power—and that, after all, is what barrio and ghetto social innovations produce—the bato loco has no way to go but to the dangerous shell of an anarchistic zoot suiter.
Recently, a front-page story appeared, in of all places, the Wall Street Journal, which warns of possible violence in the Southwest’s Chicano barrios.
According to the newspaper, Jose Angel Guitierrez, a Texas Chicano activist who holds a master’s degree in political science, said that “It’s too late for the gringo to make amends. Violence has got to com.”
This may sound scandalously alarming but the mood in the barrio seems to back it up.
This mood is not being helped by our political and law-and-order leaders who are trying to discredit militants in the barrios as subversive or criminal.
In the traditionally quiet town of Pomona, for instance, a crowd of Mexican-American parents, not known for their civic participation, recently applauded Brown Beret speakers.
The importance of this is that a year it would be impossible to find Mexican-American parents hobnobbing with Brown Berets. Police chiefs, mayors and other leaders must learn they can no longer discredit a movement by just pointing out that the Brown Berets, or any other militant group, are involved.
In other words, whether we like it or not, Brown Berets are gaining the respect of barrio people at the expense of traditional mores.
But perhaps more importantly, the Mexican-American establishment is finding it more difficult every day to community with barrio Chicanos.
Before we scrap all the social innovations which gave the bato loco hope we should probe the probable consequences.
Column: Mexican-American School Walkout Focused on Problem
JUNE 26, 1970
During the massive East Los Angeles high school walkouts in 1968, board of education member Dr. Julian Nava turned to then school superintendent Jack Crowther and said, “Jack, this is BC and AD. The schools will not be the same again.”
“Yes,” said Crowther. “I know.”
Actually, as Nava and Crowther must have suspected, more than the schools were changing. What was happening was that a significant portion of the Mexican-American community, in supporting the walkouts and their symbolic leader, teacher Sal Castro, was asserting itself.
Few will deny that the walkouts marked a new direction for the traditionally apathetic Mexican-American community. Behind the school disorders, an unusual unity was forming which since then has solidified.
The recent decision by Dist. Atty. Evelle J. Younger to refile felony complaints in the walkout and Biltmore disturbance cases necessitates focusing some issues which could be lost in the rhetoric-filled courtroom drama sure to follow.
First, there seems to be a tendency to refer to the incidents as the “Brown Beret cases"—especially by a local wire service which called them that in its dispatches last Monday and Tuesday. Much more than the activities of a small militant group are at stake.
Brown Berets were involved in the walkouts and in the disturbances and fires at the Biltmore during a speech by Gov. Reagan April 24, 1969. But it is important to know, not from a legal but from an overall point of view, that the cases stem from a genuine concern over the quality of education Mexican-Americans are receiving.
Sal Castro, who was indicted by the grand jury on felony conspiracy charges in the school walk case, has repeatedly been defended, putting aside the indictment, which is a legal matter, by many Mexican-American organizations and such public figures as Dr. Nava, Congressmen Ed Roybal and George Brown and Dr. Miguel Montes, former member of the state board of education.
Nava went so far as to tell the news conference July 31, 1969, that Castro “has been singled out for harassment and persecution” for his “telling criticism and disclosures of the ineffectiveness of Los Angeles schools.”
Castro, by the way, was called a Brown Beret by a local newspaper (not The Times) and the controversial teacher carries a printed retraction by the paper.
In the Biltmore case, fires allegedly set by Brown Beret types beclouded the fact that many of those arrested, since exonerated of any crime, merely had wanted to tell Gov. Reagan, if somewhat impolitely, what they thought of our schools.
The very reason why the district attorney decided to refile charges against Castro and 12 others involved in the walkouts and against five persons in the Biltmore case opens important questions.
For some time now the cases have been bogged down in appellate court where the defendants contended that the grand jury indictments were illegal because persons with Spanish surnames are systematically excluded from Los Angeles county grand juries.
Dep. Dist. Atty. Richard Hecht told this column that a decision by the appellate court did not seem forthcoming and that in the interest of a speedy trial for the defendants, the district attorney’s office had decided to ask that the present cases on appeal be dismissed. This way, he continued, new charges would be processed by way of preliminary hearings, rather than the grand jury.
Predictably, Castro’s attorney, Herman Sillas, takes issue with the district attorney. He says the new move will deny an opportunity to the Mexican-American community to hear what an appellate court has to say about the composition of the grand jury.
Retorts Hecht: “We’re as anxious as anyone else to learn whether our grand juries are illegally constituted—which we do not think so—but a ruling from the appellate court does not seem to be in sight.”
Hecht also pointed out that there is a Sirhan Sirhan appeal in the State Supreme Court involving his claim that Los Angeles grand juries are not representative and that a ruling in that case could clear the air on the matter.
The fact remains, however, that according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in Los Angeles county, with almost 500,000 eligible Spanish surname residents, only four served as grand jurors during a 12-year period studied.
Sillas also wonders why if Castro charged with felonious conspiracy in the school walkouts, no teacher was so charged during the recent teachers’ strike.
Hecht answers that in the first place there is some evidence of violence in the East Los Angeles walkouts—which is denied by the participants—and that besides, the teachers’ strike involved a union. “Union activities have a greater degree of protection under the First Amendment than do other activities,” Hecht said.
The point is that whatever one may think of the merits of either side of these cases, grassroot movements such as the school walkouts bring out these important overall issues. And that is what democracy is about.
Column: The Self-Induced Blackness of Harlem Is Nearly Incredible
JULY 3, 1970
New York — “This is the most perfect city in the world for an internal revolution, for a quick takeover by a small, well disciplined group. Even better than Algiers. And the asphalt jungles of Harlem could be your Sierra Maestra.”
In a new novel by Chicano writer Hank Lopez, Che Guevara is so quoted while attending a United Nations session as a member of the Cuban delegation several years ago.
The paperback, called Afro-6, a chilling account of a black takeover of Manhattan, is turning on more black and Puerto Rican militants than Mao Tze-tung’s Little Red Book ever did.
By blowing up all the bridges around Manhattan and controlling the tunnels leading to the heart of New York, a fanatic group of blacks, led by, among others, a Harvard-trained Puerto Rican, John Rios, succeeds in capturing the island in an operation called Afro-6.
One of the operation’s key maneuvers is the kidnapping of a whole trainload of rich white commuters when the New Haven train stops at the Harlem station.
The book takes on a frightening possible reality by merely taking a cab across what Lopez calls the “terminator” at 96th St. where you leave “the splendor of Park Avenue” and “suddenly plunge into the squalor of Harlem.”
Whites, writes Lopez, know how to brace themselves mentally for the “‘bad bump’ at 96th Street—the abrupt and jarring transition from the glitter to the gloom.”
But to the blacks, continues Lopez, this “bump” creates “black anger and hatred more explosive than any white man could possibly image.” It creates, says Lopez, an “H-Bomb, ‘H’ for Harlem, hanging by the thread of white complacency above the flames of black militancy.”
If you haven’t been to Harlem in some time, the first thing you’ll notice is that the white rarely crosses that “bump” anymore. Black Harlem is blacker than ever before. Physically and mentally.
A white slumming in Harlem is as welcomed as a policeman at a Black Panther meeting. Blackness in Harlem is in evidence in more ways than just the people’s skin.
In Harlem’s bookstores your choice is usually limited to black literature by blacks — militant blacks. In record shops you’ll be offered black music by black composers, performed by black musicians. In restaurants the menus contains “soul food” and in the movie houses, black pictures produced by blacks.
But the thing to remember is that all this is not for the benefit of white tourists who might be interested in picking up local color but for the benefit of blacks who everyday insist on becoming blacker.
In Afro-6 Puerto Rican John Rios reconciles himself to the “truth” that it doesn’t make “a damn bit of difference” whether he’s American, Puerto Rican, Russian or Italian. “I’m still black,” concludes Rios.
Harlem today is saying, so be it!
After a few days in New York you start realizing that blacks are not the only ones experiencing self discovery. So-called hard hatters are asserting themselves with a special brand of Americanism. Tens of thousands of Italian-Americans last Monday filled Columbus Circle for a communal outpouring of Italian pride and outrage at the practice of equating Italians with criminals.
Puerto Ricans, Cubans and lower income Jews are more publicly withdrawing into their individual ethnic and racial shells.
It’s in New York, then, where you start understanding what all this talk about “polarization” means. We who were brought up on the idea that “America is a melting pot” suddenly realize that the theory is a myth if not propaganda.
It’s only in mid-Manhattan where one can get the impression that America is a melting pot. You see whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Jews and what have you going about their business apparently in perfect harmony.
Then you realize that in hectic mid-Manhattan you’re too busy making a living to notice anyone else.
In Afro-6, when the black militants start blowing up the bridges leading to Manhattan, a woman character shrieks: “The Chinese! The Chinese are attacking us!”
She had been too busy to comprehend what polarization can do to a country.
Column: Why Does Standard July Fourth Oratory Bug Most Chicanos?
JULY 10, 1970
A small group of Chicanos sat before a TV the Fourth of July to watch Honor America Day for the explicit reason of trying to determine why such events could bug them.
How could a show honoring the Flag, God and country offend any American? The Chicanos knew they had tackled a tough one and that any answer to the nagging question could be easily misinterpreted.
But being that they were merely indulging in mental and emotional calisthenics they tackled the job with alacrity.
The trouble with such patriot bashes as Honor America Day, the Chicanos decided, is that they tend to dehumanize the Flag, monopolize God and abuse the word America.
For too long the American Flag, the Chicanos agreed, has been the symbol of those who insist that property rights are more important than human rights.
Fourth of July oratory, the Chicanos noted, tends to paint God as a super American who has blessed the country with its great wealth and power because right thinking people—like those who attend Honor America Day celebrations and wave the Flag vigorously—run the place.
But the thing that bugged the Chicanos the most was that the United States is called America, as if that name belonged exclusively to Anglo United States.
All this spelled one thing to the Chicanos: our system insists on Anglicization.
Most Anglos, the Chicanos decided, are unconscious of this and so cannot comprehend why Honor America Day could offend any “good American.”
After watching Honor America Day and making their comments the small group of Chicanos unwound and had a good Fourth of July, just like many other Americans.
The thing to remember, however, is that this small group of Chicanos voiced the thinking of a significant part of the Chicano movement. Chicanos are resisting Anglicization.
UCLA’s Mexican-American Cultural Center has just released the first issue of a “Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts.” The journal is called Aztlan for the Mexican Indian word which describes the Southwestern part of this continent which includes the five U.S. Southwestern states and Northern Mexico.
Chicanos explain that they are indigenous to Aztlan and do not relate, at least intellectually and emotionally, to the Anglo United States.
The journal, written by Chicano university scholars, starts off with the “Spiritual Plan of Aztlan” which was adopted by the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference held in Denver in March 1969.
The wording of the “plan” may shed some light for those wishing to understand the Chicano movement:
“In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal ‘gringo’ invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan, from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
“We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows and by our hearts. Aztlan belongs to those that plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.
“Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner ‘gabacho’ (white) who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan.”
Whether we like it or not Fourth of July Americanism is in disrepute among minorities because they can’t seem to relate to it.
Singer Joan Baez, who is part Chicana, recently said that the defense of country, as used in Fourth of July oratory, “has absolutely nothing to do with the defense of people.” She continued:
“Once we get rid of the obsession with defending one’s country, we will begin defending life ... That’s why I hate flags. I despite any flag, not just the American Flag. It’s a symbol of a piece of land that’s considered more important than the human lives on it ...”
Whether we agree or not, it behooves us to revamp our Fourth of July oratory to relate to people instead of to fixed ideas that apparently are not working.
Column: Pachuco Folk Heroes — They Were First to Be Different
JULY 17, 1970
Folk heroes arise of a need to articulate feelings unsung by conventionality.
Our real leaders, that is, people who actually run the country, are rarely inspirational enough to satisfy our need for romantic self-identity.
The Bob Dylans, Che Guevaras and Joe DiMaggios represent not a practical way of life but a spirit, an inspiration needed by hero makers.
This make help explain why the pachuchos or zoot suiters of the early forties are becoming folks heroes in the eyes of Chicanos from colleges to prisons.
An East Los Angeles College publication, La Vida Nueva (The New Life), in its current issue, carries an article about pachucos which depicts them as heroic victims of the Establishment.
At McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in Washington, a group of pintos (which is what Chicano prisoners call themselves) recently published a booklet which says that the pachuchos “were the the true vanguards of the present Chicano social revolution.”
The booklet, written by the pintos after a seminar in the prison attended by, among others, a Harvard sociologist, a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice and Mexican-American leaders, says:
“During the early 1940’s there were a group of young Chicanos who were artos (fed up) with the System. They wore their hair long, went against the norm by dressing unconventionally and confronted Society with a defiant attitude. They were pachucos. These Chicanos were the first to protest and rebel by direct confrontation with the Establishment ...”
The college publication article and the prison booklet stem from a deep desire by young Chicanos and alienated Mexican-Americans to understand their uniqueness as Americans.
Pachuchos are becoming folk heroes because they were rebels. And sensitive people need to understand rebellion because they know it is not created in a vacuum. There’s always a reason for rebellion.
A Beverly Hills reader recently wrote me that this column’s “emphasis on Chicano militants and leftists does a disservice to the vast majority of Mexican-Americans who are predominately a dignified and hard-working people.”
The reader continues: “By nature they (Mexican-Americans) are not competitive and ambitious as Japanese, Jews or Europeans, but many will continue to improve their economic status to the degree permitted by their ambitious mainly, and secondly by their maintenance of a decent and non-threatening image to Anglos who are basically a fair-minded people unless they feel threatened ...”
“Why,” asks the teacher, “should any Anglo care about what happens” to pachucos or the latter-day version, the batos locos (crazy guys).
The reader then reminds us, and probably correctly so, that “we (Anglos) are very ready to crush the bato loco if he gets too carried away and goes the route of the pachuco ... I have had many a run with them and know that the bato loco will be dealt with even more harshly (than with the pachuco) because are entering a phase of being fed up with unsafe streets and you will find that the best thing you can do for Mexican-Americans is to avoid emphasis on such dregs and outcasts ...”
In other words, this column should tell Chicanos to shape up and fly right because, as the reader puts it, “to the degree that they (Mexican-Americans) learn our language and show a desire to advance and acquire skills, to that degree will they prospoer and be accepted by the majority.”
It is odd that this Anglo reader from Beverly Hills should demand from Chicanos what Anglos are finding increasingly difficult to demand of Anglo youths: unquestionable acceptance of the System.
He might remember that hippies more or less copied their outlandishness from the pachucos, and with impunity yet. As a boy I came to California once during the early forties and I was asked by concerned older friends to remove my sport jacket because it was about an inch longer than was conventionally thought proper and I might be mistaken for a pachuco.
This came to mind recently as I sat in the Music Center Pavilion, in my conservative business suit, next to an Anglo man with hair to his shoulders, striped bell bottom trousers and a psychedelic shirt.
Then I remember what Octavio Paz, Mexican poet-essayist-diplomat, said about why the pachuco flaunted his differences.
“The purpose of his grotesque dandyism and anarchic behavior,” wrote Paz, “is not so much to point out the injustices and incapacity of a society that has failed to assimilate him as it is to demonstrate his personal will to remain different.”
Pachucos are becoming folk heroes because of the yearning in all of us to be individuals first and part of a System second.
Column: A Beautiful Sight: the System Working the Way It Should
JULY 24, 1970
In matters of human rights there is nothing more beautiful than to see the System work.
The fast charges brought against seven policemen in the killing of two unarmed Mexicans gave the Chicano community a much needed breathing spell. Some of its leaders were beginning to despair that East Los Angeles would “blow up” unless there was clear indication that working within the system is not just a synonym for selling out.
Another indication that the System is working was a decision by the California appellate court which prompted the district attorney to drop charges against Sal Castro and 12 others involved in the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkouts.
The court ruled that the conspiracy charges against these Chicanos “rests entirely on circumstantial evidence” and that this type of “conspiracy-circumstantial evidence” route is “too blunt an instrument.” These two important decisions came just as too many Chicanos were beginning to agree with the dictum of Brown Beret leader David Sanchez which goes “To the Anglo ‘justice’ means ‘just us.’”
The killing of the two Mexicans on July 16, Rep. Edward Roybal said during the crisis, was caused by the “utter lack of professionalism displayed by the policemen ... More was lost that evening than the lives of these two men.
“The Mexican-American community’s faith in and respect for their law enforcement agencies was totally shattered that night.”
Asserting that “no longer is it advisable to leave this grave crisis in the hands of the local authorities,” Roybal asked for and got a federal grand jury investigation.
On hearing this, a television newsman and Roybal’s opponent in the November election asked one of the most irrelevant questions ever aired.
Why, they asked, didn’t Roybal call for a federal grand jury investigation when two Mexicans killed two Border Patrolman a couple of years ago?
Though the question is irrelevant, the answer is pertinent to what Roybal calls the “swiftly approaching midnight hour for police community relations.”
When the Border Patrolmen were killed it was crystal clear what had to be done. The murderers had to be found and punished.
When a policeman kills a civilian things aren’t that clear. When there is a question about the officer’s comportment in such a death, the case is sometimes turned over to the county grand jury where it is handled in secrecy.
Councilman Billy Mills, in reference to a constituent killed by police, thinks this is highly unsatisfactory and that a way must be found to make investigations of police shooting public.
Roybal, who like Mills is attuned to how the minority communities feel about the issue, said after the shootings of the two Mexicans:
“Either the governmental authorities responsible for supervising the activities of our law enforcement agencies fulfill their responsibility to stop this abuse of police power or they must be prepared to confront the real possibility of a general breakdown in law enforcement withing the racial and ethnic communities of Los Angeles.”
What all this really means is that both the community and the police are understandably afraid about the growing violence in our society. Let’s not for a minute forget that two policemen were recently killed in Chicago while working with community groups and let’s not forget the four California Highway Patrolmen slaughtered in Newhall.
What we must forget is old attitudes which are now very dangerous to hold.
Anyone who has worked a police beat as a reporter, as I have, knows that policemen tend to have difference attitudes toward enforcing the law depending on the social, financial and racial makeup of the people they deal with.
This is not a special police attribute but it becomes very important when an armed policeman has some sort of confrontation with an unarmed civilian.
Another attitude that policemen must learn to forget is their uptight defensiveness when questioned about touchy matters. (Newsmen, by the way, suffer from this too.)
Some time ago I asked a high police official to confirm or deny information which I had which showed that a policeman who had just shot a Mexican-American boy had been suspended twice before, once for threatening another boy with a cocked pistol.
“Before I answer that,” the police official said, “let me remind you that the release of such information will hurt your community more than it will hurt mine.”
The implications of that statement are staggering and too complicated to go into here. But one of the implications was that certain communities, in this instance Mexican-Americans, can not handle certain kinds of information.
After the recent shootings of the Mexican nationals I was confronted with sort of attitude again. As news director of KMEX-TV (a Spanish-language station) I authorized the showing on our newscast of two very good interviews with the survivors of the shootings shortly after they happened.
The morning after the newscast two policemen visited me to express their concern about the showing of the interviews. They did not question my right to run the interviews but warned me about the “impact” the interviews would have on the police department’s image. Besides, they said, this kind of information could be dangerous in the minds of barrio people.
Communications nowadays, whether through the underground press or national networks, are too good to take refuse in this sort of attitude. What we must do is level with each other more, not less.
The district attorney’s quick and decisive action in the killing of the two Mexican nationals was a beautiful way of showing that the System does work. Let’s keep it that way.
Column: Chicano Reminds Blacks They Are Not the Only Minority
JULY 31, 1970
It takes a bold Mexican to address the Urban League and tell its members that too much attention is given blacks at the expense of Chicanos.
But that’s the kind of guy Dioncio Morales is. Speaking before the League’s recent 60th anniversary convention at the New York Hilton, Morales told his hosts that most Mexican-Americans “reject the over-simplification that everything that is good for blacks is good for Mexican-Americans.”
Morales, who has said that one of the reasons Chicanos and blacks don’t get along too well is that Negroes tend to be black Anglos, reminded the Urban League that it was Booker T. Washington who warned of the danger of standardization.
In his book “Up From Slavery” the black educator, Morales pointed out, says that “No white American ever thinks any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language and professes the white man’s religion.”
In Washington D.C., where the power is, and even in the Southwest, where Mexican-Americans outnumber blacks, the word “minority” is equated with the term “black,” Morales said. Because of this, Morales warned, blacks and Chicanos are on a collision course.
Morales, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Mexican-American Opportunity Foundation, told his hosts that blacks and Mexican-Americans together “could make unprecedented progress of unimaginable mutual benefit.”
“But if we muff it, and miss the opportunity, the blacks may end up with another unexpected burden on their backs—on top of all the rest—and that burden may well be the frustrated, rejected, neglected and hostile Mexican-American.”
Morales, a fighter for “la raza” when many of the present Chicano leaders were in diapers, is used used to tackling tough issues. An early foe of the bracero system, Morales traveled to Mexico City once and publicly told the Mexican government that it should do something about stopping the flow of cheap Mexican labor to the United States because Mexican nationals were taking jobs away from Mexican-Americans while the Mexican nationals themselves were being exploited by American employers.
Both governments issued cool statements against Morales.
Now Morales is saying, to the Urban League yet, that “blacks get a disproportionate number of the important opportunities and appointments intended for minorities.”
“This fact,” Morales told the historic 60th anniversary Urban League conference, “is becoming more and more abrasive to my people throughout the Southwest.”
According to a study by the Metropolitan Applied Research Center, there are 1,586 elected black officials in the United States, including 10 members of Congress (one senator), 173 state legislators, 51 mayors, 701 “other city, county officials.” 423 school board members and 228 law enforcement officials.
“I would propose,” Morales told the League, “that we emphasize to black representatives in positions of influence and authority that the word ‘minority’ includes others than blacks—and that this fact is more of an opportunity than a threat.”
Morales reminded the League that though blacks are the nation’s largest minority, with some 20 million people, and Latins the second largest, with 10 million, Mexican-Americans are the largest minority in the Southwest.
“It worries me that our two groups are pretty much doing their own thing, each with little regard for the other,” Morales said. “Each without communication with the other, in a total absence of mutual understanding and organization.”
Morales said his message was that “the mobilization of the black community must not be accomplished as though the brown community does not exist. Nor should the converse be allowed to come about.”
Morales said Dr. Charles Hamilton of Columbia University summed up the whole problem when he said: “We have allowed ourselves to be caught up in time consuming public debates with each other, while our true oppressors go right on oppressing us.”
The fact remains, however, that Morales was really indicting Washington more than any one else for its easy way out of equating “minority” with black.
This was reenforced recently by the filing of petition for redress of grievances against the Administration by, among others, the California Rural Legal Assistance, the Mexican-American Political Assn., and the Chicano Law Students Assn. of California.
The petition pointed out that “the executive branch, despite eloquent promises and the presence of 10 million Spanish-surnamed Americans, has virtually no Spanish-surnamed Americans at policy level jobs—only 35 of 9,286.”
Column: Sentiment of Minority Building for Chicano Voting Rights Act
AUG. 7, 1970
Roberto Aragon goes to Harvard soon but intends to return and fight for what he calls a “Chicano Voting Rights Act.”
As executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Urban Coalition, Aragon could not rightly speak out on controversial issues. His decision to resign his post and work on a university master’s degree changed all that. Overnight he’s become publicly what he’s been privately all along—a Chicago activist.
Aragon belongs to what might be described as a Chicano Kennedy-type family. He has six brothers, each of whom is impressive in his own way.
His brother Manuel is general manager of the City of Commerce Investment Co. and formerly executive director of EYOA. The other brothers are Charles, who has been writing pop and rock music for years; Joe, who will start his third year at USC law school and was chairman of the Chicano Law Student Assn. last year; Lalo, who is working on his doctorate degree at Harvard Business School; Luis, who has just completed his fist year at Yale, and Conrado, who plans to go to law school after he gets out of the Army.
Among the many projects in Roberto Aragon’s teenage mind is a plan which would change the Immigration and Naturalization Act so that many thousands of Mexican legal alien residents in this country could become citizens by taking their naturalization tests in Spanish.
The foundation of this project is a bold challenge to the widely held premise that English is the national language. Spanish, he contends, is as much a part of the Southwest as cactus and as “American.”
He figures there are about 250,000 Mexican nationals who are permanent adult residents of Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties. Yet, in each of the last three years fewer than 500 Mexican nationals have become citizens in this three-county area. Reason? Most of the 250,000 do not speak English.
As long as there is no massive outlay of public funds to teach these people English they should be allowed to take citizenship tests in Spanish, Aragon argues.
(Non-English-speaking people over 65 years of age, by the way, are allowed to take citizenship tests in their native tongue, but Aragon is interested in the young, more active potential voter.)
The Chicano Voting Rights Act, says Aragon, would do for the Mexican-American community throughout the Southwest what the Voting Rights Act did for the black community in the South.
“Our estimates are that if the Spanish-speaking community could overcome its voter registration deficits which are rooted in the problem of noncitizenship, its political strength could be increased as much as 40% in California,” Aragon says.
“Without that, the Mexican-American community is unlikely to achieve any gains at all in its local, state or national representation.”
The Chicano Voting Rights Act, Aragon says, is a must because the establishment, especially on the local level, cannot be trusted to look out for the needs of the Chicano.
Aragon, an optimist and idealist by nature, has recently been embittered by the Los Angeles City Council’s failure to include in a proposed new charter an amendment which would expand membership of the council from 15 to 17 members. Under this plan, which would form at least one district with a majority of Mexican-American voters, the election of a Chicago councilman would be possible.
The amendment, however, will be placed separately on the ballot and not as part of the new charter proposal.
“Putting the expansion plan separately from the charter is a sure way of killing the plan which might have given us at least one Chicano councilman,” says Aragon. “It’s the worst sort of tokenism.”
Aragon figures that most of the money and effort will be spend on the charter proposal and that none will be left over to push the expansion plan.
The plan, spearheaded by black Councilman Thomas Bradley and supported by black Councilman Billy Mills and Gilbert Lindsay, “was ruined by so-called white liberal councilmen like Edmund Edelman who should be helping the Chicano community and are not,” says Aragon.
Edelman protests that the reason he supported the idea of separating the charter and the expansion plan was because that was the only way conservative councilmen would go along with the new charter proposal.
Nevertheless, Aragon represents a growing number of Chicano moderates who are losing faith with the white liberal establishment. That’s why, they say, some sort of Chicano Voting Rights Act is necessary.
The fact the Mexican-American Political Assn. in its convention last weekend refused to endorse Jess Unruh, a while liberal, for governor and instead endorsed a Chicano Peace and Freedom Party candidate, Ricardo Romo, indicates the Chicano’s growing disenchantment with white liberalism.
It also shows a growing unity among Chicanos.
“I would have worked for Unruh,” says Aragon, “but after what the Mexican-American Political Assn. did I can’t.”
All this might mean a second term for Gov. Reagan, muse Chicanos, but right now Chicano unity, which means political power, is more important to them than who gets elected.
Column: County’s ‘Affirmative’ Plan to Hire Minorities Reads Negative
AUG. 14, 1970
It was on March 18, 1969, that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered that more Chicanos, blacks and members of other racial minorities be placed on the county payroll so as to give them a more meaningful participation in our county government.
With great fanfare the commitment was baptized the Affirmative Action Program.
In December of that year Herb Carter, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, warned the 14th annual county management conference against hypocrisy.
”... Even as we talk about an Affirmative Action Program,” Carter told the county executives, "(past experience) has caused me to view with a great deal of skepticism that a sign hanging on the door or a note printed on the bottom of a county bulletin really means what it says ...”
When the county made its great commitment the situation was this: though Spanish surname people make up 13% of the county population Spanish surname people make up only 4.7% of county employment, too many of these jobs in the menial category.
Today, the situation is almost identical. Some say it has worsened.
Not much has been said about this because few in county government wanted to rock the boat while the past election was at stake and while the job of L.S. Hollinger, county chief administrative officer, who has decided to resign, is up for grabs.
As a result little information has been made available to such agencies as Carter’s Human Relations Commission on the progress or lack of progress of the county’s Affirmative Action Program.
A check with the county’s personnel office indicated that a report on the Affirmative Action Program would be available sometime in September. However, no one in that office is optimistic that the report will show meaningful gains.
“It’s hard to change a system,” said a weary county bureaucrat.
That perhaps is the crux of the matter. We’re all for doing right but few of us are willing to take the painful necessary steps.
Instead, it appears, we conduct a new survey.
One of the newest is a “racial distribution survey” which went to college placement counselors.
“As Placement Director,” asks the survey form, “how do you feel the County of Los Angeles could maximize recruitment of minority people?”
With the simplicity of one who has broken away from the gobbledy gook of reform language, Joyce Gomez, a placement counselor for Cal State Los Angeles answers:
“Do away with your white middle class exams which are completely irrelevant to jobs minorities seek and very discriminatory.”
Miss Gomez contends, for instance, that there are many minority sociology college majors who could do a good job for the county but have been unable to get jobs because “they were not able to prove their mental” agility “in vocabulary and number progression which are alien in their elementary and secondary educational background.”
Miss Gomez claims that the county turns away many “sharp, highly intelligence and concerned” minority people because white middle class exams make them look unqualified.
The county’s insensitivity does not end with the way it deals with minority sociology graduates.
Recently, the county department of beaches sent out questionnaires to try to determine why Los Angeles could not recruit more black lifeguards.
“In the Southern California area,” reveals the county letter accompanying the questionnaire, “few black swimmers, if any, reach the finals in any top high school or college league. We are also unable to find a black water polo player participating on a top high school or college team. Even when looking toward the national A.A.U. and N.C.A.A. swimming and water polo teams, and the United States Pan American and Olympic water polo and swimming teams, we do not find blacks. Why is this? Yet, black athletes in other fields of competition are certainly outstanding.”
Has it not occurred to the director of beaches and the lieutenant of lifeguards, who sent out the questionnaire, that ghetto alleys might be a good training ground for boxers but not for aquatic sports?
In trying to determine why more blacks do not participate in aquatic sports the county questionnaire asks the question:
“The lack of blacks in competitive aquatic sports is due to:
- Physical (external)
—1. Coordination
—2. Other—
II. Physiological (internal)
—1. Bone structure
a.—heavy
b.—light
c.—other—.”
Oh, come on.
Then the questionnaire asks whether maybe the lack of black swimmers is due to muscle tissue. Is it heavy? light? other? Or maybe it’s due to buoyancy. Is it positive? Negative? Or muscles? Long? Short? Other? Or maybe blood. Thick? Thin? Other?
As of now it does not look like the September report on the county’s Affirmative Action Program is going to be revealing. It will probably say the obvious: that the county is as unsuccessful as ever in recruiting racial minorities. But the message will really be that the county is not willing to change the system.
Column: For Really Fouling Things Up, a Bilingual Computer Is Best
AUG. 21, 1970
Everyone has heard at least one story about being victimized by computer billing. But in two languages?
It all started when I moved from a temporary residence in Mexico City back to my permanent address in the Los Angeles area. While in Mexico I acquired a “charge everything” credit card and when I returned to the United States I sent the company a change of address at which I continued to receive my bills.
Simple? Not if you understand the communication gap between Mexican and American computers. Bilingual education they don’t have.
In front of me I have a canceled check for $239.33 made out to the credit card company. I contend that I have never been credited with the amount and have said so in writing and by telephone to the firm’s office personnel who promised to check it out.
Instead, I continue to get bills from Mexico City and Los Angeles, followed quickly by nasty and threatening form letters.
The latest one reads: “Do you understand what a lawsuit entails? The court will render judgement in our favor, and instruct the sheriff to seize your property (automobile, land, house, bank account or salary) to satisfy this judgement. In addition, you will be required to pay the litigation costs and attorney fees.”
I picked up the phone to call the man who signed the letter. “Very truly yours —, Legal Department.” I wanted to tell Mr. — that the letter was presumptuous and certainly un-American.
The letter, I wanted to tell him, says “the court will render judgement in our favor ...” Anxious to remind Mr. — how President Nixon got in hot water for prejudging the Manson case, I waited impatiently as the phone rang.
When someone finally answered it was to inform me that Mr. — was out to lunch. The person took down my name and telephone number and promised Mr. — would call me after lunch.
As of this writing he hasn’t called.
So, while waiting for the sheriff to seize my property I sit here wondering where I went wrong to alienate the company’s Mexican and American computers.
Their letter said I “ignored” their previous letters. Have they forgotten that on Jan. 14 when I sent them a check for $307.02 I included a note which pointed out that they had not credited my account for $239.33 which I paid by check on Jan. 7? Could that note have been swallowed by the Mexican computer which spewed it out because no habla ingles?
Ignored their letters? Have they forgotten that on April 7 I wrote a letter to a collection manager with an Anglo-Saxon name, who should be able to read English, and said:
“It is incredible that at this stage I still have to communicate with you in another attempt to explain what is wrong with the billing of my account. This, after a note, a letter and repeated telephone calls to your collection department. I will try once more—without too much optimism.”
Then I tried.
In return, I got a letter, a full month later, which included a “member’s account itemization.” In it it shows the $307.02 payment which I mentioned above but not the $239.33 which I have paid earlier. I have a canceled check for $239.33. Which computer swallowed that? The Mexican or American? And why it’s it telling the collection department?
Then, a beautiful thing happened. I got a bill with a three cent ($.03) credit! In a telephone conversation the credit card company man explained that apparently the $239.33 had gone to pay my Mexico City account and that I had three cents left from that. I tried to explain that I didn’t have a Mexico City account and a Los Angeles account. That I had left Mexico in December, 1968, and had changed my address and so had gotten all my Mexico bills in the States and had paid them in the intervening year and a half.
The three cent credit, however, softened up my wife. She said that maybe, just maybe, the firm was right and that I had owed Mexico City $239.30 and that the $239.33 had taken care of that and so I should be happy with my three cent credit.
Well, I couldn’t agree because I wondered why the Mexican computer would wait more than a year to claim $239.30 and besides, where in the bills did credit for $239.30 show? All I had was a credit for three cents.
But then it was kinda nice to know that the Mexican computer now said I didn’t ow it anything but instead it OWED ME three cents. The three cent glow of satisfaction lasted only about a month.
On Aug. 5 I received a bill from Mexico City for 3,996.13 pesos or about $302 and a bill from Los Angeles for $409.63.
There was a charming difference, however, between the way the American computer and the Mexican computer billed me.
The American computer sent along a letter saying the sheriff would take away all my property while the Mexican computer sent, along with the bill, a form on which it asked me to recommend friends for that credit card company’s service.
Column: The Mexican-Americans NEDA Much Better School System
AUG. 28, 1970
A week ago today Vice President Agnew stood in a sea of television lights at the Century Plaza Hotel to announce the formation of a new national organization to promote business development among the nation’s 10 million Spanish speaking citizens.
Agnew said the undertaking would help ensure that “Americans of Hispanic descent get a fair chance at the starting line.”
By the end of the day, thanks to great coverage the Vice President gets from the news media, the whole nation knew of the formation of the National Economic Development Assn. or NEDA.
In the barrios Chicanos immediately started calling NEDA NADA, which in Spanish spells “nothing.”
Why this rude put-down about an organization which undoubtedly will help some worth, energetic Spanish speaking entrepreneurs?
The bitterness stems from the distortion of priorities in this country.
Just two days before Agnew made his announcement, Sen. Mike Mansfield complained that too much attention was being given to the ABMs and the SSTs and not enough to the ABCs.
NEDA, started with a grant from the Small Business Administration, will initiate business development for the Spanish-speaking through public and private sources, it was announced. Fine. Great. Long overdue.
But is it accurate for the Vice President to say that NEDA will ensure that “Americans of Hispanic descent get a fair chance at the starting line?”
NEDA, as good a concept as it is, will invariably help only those who have already made it—those who are in business or ready to go into business. This is hardly the “starting line” for the Mexican-Americans in this country.
The following has been said and written many times but it has yet to effectively penetrate the minds of our national leaders: The Mexican-American has the lowest educational level, below either black or Anglo; the highest dropout rate; and the highest illiteracy rate.
Yet, bilingual education was one of the items President Nixon vetoed in the educational bill. The veto was overridden but the veto indicates a strange definition the Administration has about where the “starting line” is.
Martin G. Castillo, chairman of the Nixon Administration’s Cabinet Committee on Opportunity for the Spanish Speaking, said during the NEDA press conference that the Vice President had recently donated $10,000 to the Salesian Boys Club from proceeds of the sale of Spiro Agnew watches.
Castillo complained that this gesture typifying the “other side of the Vice President,” got little mention in the news media.
That may be. But something besides the Vice President’s Spiro Agnew watch gesture was being ignored by the news media.
On the same day that Agnew was getting nationwide publicity over the formation of NEDA, the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity was winding up a tow-day hearing on minority educational problems. The Vice President and NEDA got the lion’s share of the publicity.
Complained Sen. Walter Mondale, chairman of the committee: “We found that the best way to get television cameras out of this room and reporters to leave is to hold a hearing on Mexican-American education. There doesn’t seem to be any interest. Yet this is the second largest minority in America.”
Mario Obledo, director of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the senators that it was a “tragedy on the part” of federal and state government to ignore the education problems of Mexican-Americans.
“How do you bring this to the attention of the American public?” asked Obledo. Does it require some overt act of violence to bring it forth, or can it be handled in a manner that is conducive with the American way of life?
Father Henry J. Casso, also of the Mexican-American Defense Fund, asked Sen. Mondale: “How long would you and I continue to do business with a lawyer who lost eight out of 10 cases; a doctor who lost eight of every 10 of his patients? Being a religionist, what would my bishop do if I lost eight of 10 parishioners?”
“Yet the institutions, including government, have remained mute to see eight of every 10 Mexican-American children drop out, kicked out and pushed out of the education institutions of this country. No one has asked an accounting for vast sums of public money that have been wasted. But the young are demanding an accounting and I stand with them.”
Dr. Hector Garcia, a Texas physician and former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who was dumped from the commission by the Nixon Administration, testified that 80% of Mexican-American students in Texas never get past the sixth grade.
”... the system has not worked for us,” Dr. Garcia said. “I am here as a capitalist. I am one of the few Mexicano capitalists. They say, ‘Dr. Garcia, why do you criticize?’ I say, I only criticize because I want more Mexicano capitalists, educated, in college ...”
NEDA, then, will mean little until the government is serious about creating more Chicano capitalists—through good schools.
